


one word from you and i would jump right off this ledge im on baby

by ninjatools



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, M/M, Time Skips, the warning is only for their fights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 18:24:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21202073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninjatools/pseuds/ninjatools
Summary: Sasuke has to kill Naruto.





	one word from you and i would jump right off this ledge im on baby

**Author's Note:**

> ok this has been sitting in my wips for literally a year so im just going to post it
> 
> this is loosely based on [this](https://shuarks.tumblr.com/post/181699055592/first-love-late-spring) video 
> 
> uh i apologise if its formatted weirdly
> 
> title taken from first love/late spring by mitski

You’re twelve and you believe you have to kill your best friend.

You can feel his blood dripping from your fingers into the water beneath you, felt his ribs and shoulder blade crack and pop around the electricity shielding your fist, could smell and hear the burning of flesh over the eerie crackle of birds and scent of ozone. Your mouth spits gloating words even as his heart flutters against your wrist and blood continues to drip. His chest makes a sickening squelch as you tear your arm from the hole you ripped through his body. Your bloodied fingers move to grip his throat, intent on finishing what you think you must, only to be stopped by his own hand, hanging limp no more. You feel an overwhelming aura of power radiating from him, his pupils slitted as his wounds rapidly close up before your eyes, healing, leaving his skin smooth and unblemished once again.

For the first time you doubt your ability to kill him, some animal part of your brain screaming at you to run from the monster standing in front of you. He’s shouting at you, words that mean nothing, your mind still gripped in a panic so visceral you can only stare. He says he’s your friend, his words punctuated by blows to your chest, your face, he’s moving too fast to see, you can only feel the heavy weight, then pain of each hit. It’s smothering, his presence all around you, his touch on your skin, his _love_. His love is choking you, pulling you under, you're drowning in it, it would be so easy to give in, to just stop and _give up_. But you don't, you can’t, can’t forsake your mother like that, can’t forget the words of your father, the pride in his voice as you breathed fire, lips so dry and cracked you could hardly talk afterwards.

You're eight, you're eight and you've just walked into your home to find your brother standing bloody over the bodies of your parents. You know death, you are aware that it can come at any time, but you've never seen it so violently displayed like this before. Your father is slumped over your mother, blood pooling underneath their still bodies, corpses now. They both have blood trickling from their open mouths, eyes closed never to open again. And Itachi, your brother, is just standing there. He’s dressed in his Anbu gear. Your father was so proud when Itachi joined Anbu, and you ached for just a morsel of that same pride. And now he’s dead, killed by your brother, the brother who carried you home when you twisted your ankle, who looked after you, raised you, helped you, and who only ever treated you with kindness and understanding. Your parents are dead and you don't understand.

Itachi is telling you something, his voice somehow making it through the screaming in your head; his words fuel your hatred and confusion, you’ll hear them for years, ringing in your mind every time someone mentions Itachi or revenge or friendship, they’ll accompany the nightmare you see whenever you close your eyes: “You have to kill your closest friend.”

You're twelve again and staring into the eyes of a boy who should be dead and asking him why he would go through so much for you and at his answer you feel an emotion roar through you that’s so strong it can only be hate, you tell yourself its hate, and your sharingan gets its third tomoe.

Suddenly you can see like you have never before, you can see where he is going to move before he does, each movement telegraphed for you. You can still win this fight. You can still kill your best friend. You have to kill your best friend.

And you're winning, you're winning until red chakra begins to bubble out from him, lifting his prone form and creating a cloak around his whole body. His nails have lengthened, curling into full blown claws, fangs protrude out from his gums, tearing into his lip, the cuts healing instantly, making it seem as if he’s salivating blood; the scars on his cheek thickening, becoming even more whisker-like. The chakra is hot, evaporating the water he’s standing on, steam making the air wet and heavy; malevolence oozes from the chakra, triggering something within your own curse mark. You can feel your anger spiralling out of control, your sharingan wildly spinning as you try to take in everything, brain almost overloading with the quantity of information, unused to this onslaught. Panic making your breath come quicker, you're nearly gasping as you try to drag oxygen out of the water heavy air and you feel something give within you, and its instant relief. Black marks spiral out from your curse mark, spreading across your whole body, staining your skin grey; your scalp itches as your hair grows long and purple; nails elongating, sharpening. You can feel the raw power coursing through your body, erasing your fear, you can breath easy.

He runs at you again and your body reacts even faster than your sharingan, you feel an intense ripping pain in your shoulder and suddenly there's a grotesque hand covering your sight, concealing your body, protecting you from his attack.

You're sixteen and you're lying next to the dead body of your brother. It’s raining but you can’t feel it, body numb except for the spot on your forehead where he touched you as he died, that place is burning, heat burrowing through your skin and skull and taking root in your brain. You wonder if its Itachi’s final move, his last jutsu effective even beyond death. You find you don’t really care; the ambition you proclaimed to Team 7 what seems like an eternity ago has been accomplished. You never had a plan beyond killing Itachi, you assumed you'd die and take Itachi with you. As you lie there, victorious, you can’t help but think that you should be feeling something other than emptiness. Your vision starts to blur and darken as the fight takes its toll, you wonder whether you will wake up again and if this dark sky will be the last thing you see. His face flashes across your eyes, blond hair and blue eyes blinding in the gloom, and you're too weak to push down the wave of regret that bubbles up at the fact that you might never see him again.

You stand over his still body, a hole in his jacket where your fist forced its way through his chest, now just smooth skin. The clouds summoned by the volatile clashing chakra part, and sunlight streams through, illuminating Naruto's corpse-like state, shrouding him in a halo. You watch as the sunlight shrinks, getting smaller and smaller until it disappears from his face. When darkness is all around again you feel your hitai-ate come loose and slip from your head, coming to rest on the ground next to Naruto's body with a sharp _clink_. Your mouth opens unbidden and you feel his name slip past your tongue and teeth, lost to the silence that's settled around you. You sense something in the air and you look up just as the first drops of rain begin to fall, droplets running down your cheeks, cool against the sensitive skin. A sharp pain tears through your right arm, the sting of a thousand tiny blades rippling under the skin. Its enough to bring your weakened body to its knees, blood bursting past your lips to spatter next to wet golden hair as you lean over his face. Droplets of rain roll down your nose to _plink_ against the metal of his hitai-ate, the water swirling round the whorls of the Konoha symbol. You stare at his closed eyelids, at the face of this boy, this fragile child, his chest just barely rising and falling with each hard won breath, his clothes torn and tattered, and although you may have failed to kill him you can’t help but think that that might be a good thing.

The kunai is gripped fiercely in your fist, resolve strong, you will kill her, this will be the last time she gets in your way. Maybe if you think it enough (you’ll have the strength to actually go through with it) it will actually happen. You move – but he moves faster, your kunai scratches his cheek as he darts past, Sakura cradled in his arms. Even as you crow about killing each member of the Leaf, your voice sounds fractured and fragile, _weak, _you hate feeling weak, Itachi's voice always in the back of your mind, telling you that you're weak because you don't have enough hatred as he has you pinned to the wall, cold red eyes boring into your own, and it hurts all the more now, now that you know what Konoha forced him through. The only way you know how to express emotion now is through violence and destruction, your rage and the unfamiliar feeling of love manifesting through pain and the quick sinking of a blade into flesh, the hot burn of fire pouring from your lips, crackling lighting running down your sword; these sensations are all that you know. The boy you once were was sucked out by Orochimaru, replaced by someone who no longer flinches at death, who doesn't think about the suffering they cause, who doesn't see sunflowers and blue skies and think of him, who was driven solely by the hatred of his brother. Itachi's death had shattered the fragile shell you had become.

How many times are you going to look into his eyes and tell him you’ll kill him?

You blink open your eyes, pain pulsing through your whole body. You're looking up at a navy sky, moon full and bright overhead. You hear words coming from somewhere to your left. As you turn your head you see what’s left of your arm, gone below the elbow, blood steadily dripping from the open wound. Your eyes follow the flow of blood, trickling down the rock, coming from your arm and the arm of someone lying next to you.

You're 12 and you're offering your bento to the boy tied to the post next to you. You can’t quite figure out why.

You're 12 and your body moves on its own, throwing itself in front of that same boy, needles embedding themselves in your flesh

You look at the man on the ground by your side, matching wounds bleeding into a bloody imitation of held hands. You ask him why and his answer makes your eyes wet, a tear leaking out to run down your cheek. You turn your head away from his heavy gaze.

Sakura is patching you up, healing chakra burning into your skin. He laughs from beside you, warm and happy and you watch him, watch his bright smile, and you think that perhaps this is where you're supposed to be.

It’s sunny and cool, a perfect autumn day, his hand fits into yours like it’s meant to be there, calloused and warm, and you’re so thankful you didn't kill him; so thankful that you can exist as a pair now; so thankful that you get to see him achieve his dreams, see him change the system; so thankful you get to help him.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry its sort of rushed towards the end i just wanted to get it out tbh
> 
> hope it wasnt too bad lol 
> 
> you can find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/usersasuke)  
which is currently @usersasuke


End file.
